always

for reals...

A blog about parenting teens and other things. There are a lot of "mommy blogs" out there. I love many of them. However, they aren't really applicable at this stage in our parenting. A blog about parenting teens? Now that is something I can get behind!

Although, I will say, if you are looking for advice on parenting, I can mostly offer the things I've found that DON'T work. I'm not an expert. AT. ALL . Unless we're talking about eyerolls. And then, I've got that shizzle nailed...

Friday, January 1, 2016

A shout out to home towns and family and ridiculousness...

As per our usual, we took off Christmas day and started our annual drive to Washington. We had already decided that since we had people staying with us, we would only drive as far as Pendleton. A wise choice as we didn't end up leaving until almost 4 PM. Here is our obligatory start-of-the-trip photo:

You can't see the Dutch Bros. for some reason. Weird, since we ALWAYS make Mark stop.

Most of our drive the first day looked like this!

Which was a welcome sight since we had been getting a bit of snow before we left. I thought the drive was easy, but probably because I was in the passenger seat reading magazines.

We got on the road "early" the next morning...around 10. Which is fairly early when you have two teens.

When we got to Grandma Jeanne and Grandpa Brians, the girls immediately headed outside for some rock skipping. Love this view!

They were also mesmerized by the record player we got G'ma and G'pa.

No trip to Washington would be complete without a trip here...

Along with the accompanying shenanigans...

And our selfie game is on point...or on fleek. Whatever these young whipper snappers say these days.

We spent some time here:

And even though I went to Fort, NOT Evergreen, I seemed to have spent quite a bit of time here my senior year for some reason. Weird.

We got to watch this chick (who goes to Fort, and never hangs out a a rival school) mix it up on the court.

We also got to hang out with these hooligans who are so, so much cooler than we are.

They fed us drinks that were on fire for goodness sake!

And took us to a classy pizza place...

And to a place that only serves pie. Well, mostly they only serve pie...

It's like they know my love language!

Obviously, the girls miss the days when I used to dress them alike...

Awkward.

There is no doubt I grew up in a gorgeous place:

We will sure miss it until the next trip.

Happy 2016!

And in the interest of full disclosure, this was written while sitting on my couch in my jammies, snuggled under my new heated blanket, sipping a homemade flat white. I {heart} vacation!!

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About Me

After growing up in Vancouver (not Canada), Washington (not D.C.), I moved to Boise, Idaho (not Iowa) in 1994. Met my cool husband, had a couple kids, got a dog...clearly we are the American dream. Ha!

I was a stay-at-home mom for 14 years and decided to go back to work full-time a couple years ago. What was I thinking? Just kidding, mostly. Blogging is a creative outlet for me. Something I miss when it's not happening.